OK, let’s kill web2.0

by Hugh

I had a discussion with Steve about the term web2.0, and whether or not it is useful. Steve wants it kyboshed.

For me, the term was very useful, because it marked the time when new tools (eg wordpress) made it possible for me to publish to the web, without knowing anything about html. So:

web1.0=passive
web2.0=active

Justin calls for death of 2.0 as well, and I started writing a comment to object, but realized: it makes me a dinosaur. The usefulness of 2.0 to me is to refer to a web that is already gone. web 2.0 replaced 1.0 … and is now… just the web. and there’s no point in saying 2.0 anymore, unless you are interested in talking about how the web used to be, way back when. Waaaay back in early 2004.

So I am on board. Web2.0 is officially stricken from my vocabularity. The web is dead. Long live the web.

8 Responses to “OK, let’s kill web2.0”

web “1.0” is still rampant. and its devotees are everywhere. i think its easy for those of us who live and think online to feel like its gone, but it’s not… yet. till then, i’m afraid i’ll have to continue using the new moniker.

You can’t expect everyone to stop using it at once Hugh, but – if someone were to ask me what ‘web 2.0’ was I’d more than likely reply ‘a marketing gimmick’. It simply doesn’t work for me to describe anything. What it spawned I think, is amazing but it doesn’t describe the effects of the technology and describing the technology itself isn’t useful to me without describing what the technology is used for and the effects it has had on culutre (culture beyond the internet.)

I forget sometimes what it meant for people who before didn’t have the knowledge to put their content on the web, but I think that in my mind once the WYSIWYG editors came out I thought ‘well now anyone can do it.’

It is hard for me to see how “Web 2.0” is anything more than a meaningless buzzword. For one thing, it is cute and gimmicky and lame, like naming your kid “Mike 2.0”. It is also a piece of marketing, meant to lend authenticity and coherence to what is really a minor innovation, not to mention a very nebulous “idea”. Real ideas don’t need marketing.

“Web 2.0” refers not to an entirely new Web but a small portion of the existing web: new web sites created using mostly existing technology but augmented by new browser functionality (XmlHttpRequest) and an emphasis on user-provided content, a concept the Web was already more or less based on, just not as slick. At best, it is Web 1.0.1, but now everything is “lickable” and has an RSS feed and a podcast.

Also, I should mention that the previous “barriers to entry” for creating your own site were not so high; there has always been Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, etc., not to mention the thousands of personal sites created in HTML 2.0 with Times New Roman and using nothing more than h1, p, and li tags, which can hardly be called “code”, and there have been WSIWYG editors for a long time now.

Anyway, I recognize that “Web 2.0” does refer to a specific type of web site. It’s clear that Google Maps is not the same as the MapQuest of old. But ultimately, not much has changed except that websites look and act a little nicer, and that we have a new class of “entrepreneurs” crowding around the buzzwords, waiting to unleash a big idea of their own, all of them pumping air into “Web 2.0” to keep the hype afloat until they can get their site bought by Google. And that is what Web 2.0 is. Drop that sucker, Hugh.

“Web 3.0” is the love child that will arrive when the navel-gazing teenager that is Web 2.0 grows up a bit, becomes a bit more worldly and cooperative and meets a Semantic Web who has learnt to loosen up and slip into something more sexy.

for the (broken) record, 2.0 is an important marker for me personally, when
(because of free tools) the web changed for me from passive to active. but really, what is the difference between saying “semantic” & “3.0”?